York College women advance to CAC semifinals

With her team comfortably ahead in the final minutes Tuesday night at York College, junior forward Brittany Hicks joined senior guard Loreta Tonuzi getting iced up on the end of the bench.

Tonuzi is still nursing a torn plantar fasciitis in her foot. Hicks, meanwhile, wrapped ice around the front part of her lower right leg.

"Oh, it's just shin splints," Hicks said afterward. "I always get them at the end of the season."

It's understandable the York Catholic grad is a little banged up right now considering her recent performances.

York s Kailee Knight, left, puts up a shot while being guarded by Frostburg s Bobbi MacDonald. (Bil Bowden photo)

Hicks just came off the second week in a row of being named the Spartan Athlete of the Week while also being named to last week's d3hoops.com Team of the Week. Her 13 points and nine rebounds Tuesday at Charles Wolf Gymnasium inside the Grumbacher Center paced No. 3-seed York in a 74-38 rout of No. 6-seed Frostburg State in the opening round of the Capital Athletic Conference Tournament.

"When you come down to the end of the season, it's playoff time," Hicks said. "That's the time when you really have to step up and start proving this is the time when you need to show people you're not joking around. We've prepared all season for this playoff."

While the women will continue playing, the York College men saw their season come to an end Tuesday night with an 80-60 CAC first-round loss at Salisbury to finish the year at 7-19.

Women move to semifinals: Junior forward Kristen Haley pumped in a game-high 22 points to go along with eight rebounds. Haley has now scored at least 20 points in four of the last seven games.

With the win, the Spartans (20-6) will now travel to No. 2-seed Mary Washington (19-6) in Virginia on Thursday for a CAC semifinal contest at 7 p.m.

It's a team York lost to twice in the regular season -- the first loss by three points and the second loss by 11 points.

Should they want to make it back the NCAA Division III tournament for a third straight year, the Spartans likely need to win the CAC tournament this week. York last won the CAC tourney in 2011.

Turnaround: York is hitting a good stride at this point in the year after a tough January stretch that included three straight losses and four losses in six games.

York dropped out of both the USA Today Coaches' and d3hoops.com Top 25 polls as a result after being ranked as high as No. 11 in both. Since then, York finished the regular season 6-2 before beating Frostburg (6-20) on Tuesday.

"I think we refocused and gathered ourselves together as a team," Hicks said.

"We fell apart a little bit. Once you start losing you get down. You want to blame something. But you really have to just take responsibility and fix things on your own."

The lack of depth on the Spartans' roster is still a concern for longtime York coach Betsy Witman. Hicks, Haley and junior guards Aja Wallpher and Kelsey Murphy have carried the load for York this season. And outside of three-point specialist Tonuzi, the Spartans' bench is thin.

"Against Mary Washington it was really obvious when we played down there last time that when Brittany (Hicks) and Kristen (Haley) are on the bench with foul trouble it killed us," Witman said. "We had to take two starters out. It's very noticeable."

Game notes: Murphy (13 points) hit two 3-pointers Tuesday and now has a career total 151 treys, good for third in program history. ... Witman said junior guard Jess Selby, who sustained a season-ending injury with a torn anterior cruciate ligament in York's second game of the season, has opted to use her medical redshirt and will return to the Spartans for two more years.

YORK COLLEGE MEN'S BASKETBALL

SALISBURY ROLLS PAST SPARTANS: The visiting Spartans trailed most of the way in an 80-60 loss to Salisbury, falling behind 36-16 with 8:32 left in the first half before closing the gap to 49-36 at intermission. Salisbury (19-7) later built the lead to 65-45 with 9:08 remaining before No. 6-seed York went on an 11-2 run to close within 67-56 with 6:03 left. But No. 3-seed Salisbury finished with a 13-4 run to seal the win. Seniors Todd Maciejewski (10 points), Mitch Kemp (10 points) and Julian Watson (12 points) paced York in their final game in a Spartans' uniform. York shot 37.5 percent from the field (21-of-56) while Salisbury made 50 percent of its attempts (24-of-48), including a remarkable 16-of-30 (53.3 percent) from beyond the arc and 16-of-17 (94.1 percent) at the line.